


she'll eat you alive

by celestial_txt



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Consensual Somnophilia, Dom/sub, F/M, Femdom, Kink Negotiation, Magical Tattoos, Oral Sex, Pegging, Porn with Feelings, Post-Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers, Praise Kink, Restraints, Rope Bondage, Shibari, Strap-Ons, Viera Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), bratty bottom energy radiating off him like a miasma, that man wants to be topped by the wol so bad it makes him stupid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:42:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26087380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestial_txt/pseuds/celestial_txt
Summary: Emet-Selch figures out that the Warrior of Light likes to dom and he is very, very eager to bottom for her.“If you are inclined to the things I think you are, we have much to benefit from each other,” he purrs. “Let me paint you a picture: you could have me on my knees, begging for you. And you could make me work for it. I could be at your mercy.” His hand touches her elbow, fingers tracing a circle around it. “But would you show me any? I would not mind either way.”
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 56
Kudos: 143





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative title: The Trials and Tribulations of Topping Emet-Selch.

Defeat is not as bitter as the poets would have one believe. Indeed, being on your knees in front of the right person can taste just as sweet as victory.

So Emet-Selch surrenders to her. It is not an easy thing to do. As long as Zodiark remains, he is tempered. There is no breaking that. None that they know of yet.

But she has taught him hope. To hope that she, with all her ways of finding the path even through the darkest of storms and foggiest of nights, will find a solution for him. To hope, even when everything is collapsing, that there is yet a way out of the dark.

It is no small feat, though she is not quite open to grasping the magnitude of it. Understandable, he supposes, given how unfortunate the latter events played out on the First. A certain degree of anger and frustration is only to be expected in the wake of such a… Well, he is loath to call it betrayal, but he is not wholly unsympathetic to her point of view in the matter.

Here she goes through all this trouble of suffering, of challenging him, of defeating him, and he robs her of the bittersweet conquest. Instead of the cleanliness of a swift death, she has a voluntary prisoner on her hands. A prisoner with the power to undo any prison she could think of creating.

Which is to say, she is very lost as to what to do with him, exactly.

Apparently, he even has to help them even draft up an adequate containment plan. Truly, an architect’s job is never done. At least he has a plan… One that she, in fact, inspired.

Her tattoos caught his eye back then already. She is covered in them, and it took him a long day’s walk under the boughs of Rak’tika’s great trees to pry that story from her.

Once upon a time, she worked as a tattooer in Limsa Lominsa. Sailors made excellent customers, tipped well, and she could exchange work with other artists. Over the years, they sprawled all over, filling up ilm by ilm of her tall body, all in various colors and motifs, ranging from geometric forms and simple black lines to painstakingly delicate blossoms exploding in bright colors over her clavicles.

The idea came to him then already, but it is not until he surrenders that he offers it to her. Auracite tattoos, to bind him. He shows her what arcane runes to etch into his body, using auracite ink to keep him bound and his power contained. A show of good faith, a willingness to make himself vulnerable for them.

Alongside her, he returns to the Source, to the Rising Stones where a room has been cleared for him in all haste. The room they give him has all the amenities he needs: a bathroom, a large writing desk. The bed is certainly wanting, but nothing he cannot fix himself. It is a nice cell, all things considered. A gilded cage.

“Krile has drawn up runes all around this room,” she says tersely, knocking to activate a sigil as she locks herself in with him. “She expanded on the design you showed me.”

“Clever.”

She hums, motioning for him to sit down on a chair as she lines up the ingredients on the desk, crushing auracite with a pestle and mortar and mixing and diluting until it is the right consistency.

Before, on the First, they flirted. He treated her to dinner once, and then thought of kissing her on the cliffs of Kholusia, but too much was at stake then to go any further. The temptation was there, of course, present and pressing. Distractions just did not serve her well.

Now though, now he has all the time in the world.

“Could you…” She sighs and pinches the ridge of her nose, motioning at his torso. “Could you undress?”

He snaps his fingers and the robe and shirt falls off his body like shadows sliding off him. She keeps her face neutral as she comes closer, close enough that he can smell the smoky, wooden perfume she wears as she inspects his skin. She thumbs at the dips alongside his chest, running her fingers over his arms.

Yet she avoids touching the twisted scar of light where she sunk the blade through him. Indeed, it seems she can barely stand looking at it.

He slows his breathing as she takes out a pen and begins tracing over his pecs, drawing the intricate swirls and esoteric sigils of the symbols.

It is the most intimate they have ever been.

“You have very smooth skin,” she says, touching the inside of his arm. “The ink should take well.”

“So your Scions know about what you keep in the basement?”

“Yes,” she says, not looking up from her preparation work on his body, though he feels her thumb gently rubbing along the inside of his wrist as she speaks. “And they don’t like it. But they are willing to allow it for now.”

“No murderous schemes, I hope.”

She shrugs. “I can’t promise that much. We all like to have our contingency plans, don’t we.” She looks meaningfully at him, a strand of her hair falling loose from the loose bun she has piled on top of her head.

Without thinking, he reaches out and tucks the lock back in. She swallows, loudly, and finishes up the sketch without another word.

He smiles, amused at how little it takes to get her flustered. At least some things have stayed the same.

It is fascinating watching her work, in no small part because she is so focused. He can tell she takes great pride in doing it with precision, to make sure every line and curl is exactly aligned as it must be.

He is, however, a little frustrated when she removes her hands from his body. Her touch feels… Good. So good. It has been so long since she touched him like this, and he cannot help the needy sigh that escapes his lips.

She looks at him, concerned. “Everything alright? Are you cold?”

“I am perfectly fine.” He smirks at her, and she shakes her head and starts lining up the tools.

“I think I will just handpoke this,” she says, laying out an array of disinfected needles. “It will be easier to ensure precision, and to make the magick more vibrant. It will take longer, however. If you need a break, just tell me.”

“I can handle pain.”

“You say that, but…”

“Thinking of our little fight?” Of the wound of light she inflicted into his chest that still throbs whenever she is near? “I assure you, pain is fleeting. Not to mention enjoyable in the right dosage.”

She quickly ducks her head away from him, but he catches the way the corners of her mouth quirk upwards at his words. He will have to push that point further some other time.

She cleans his skin off, and starts with a single prick on his shoulder. “Is this okay? I can go lighter if you need me to—”

He waves his fingers. “Just fine.”

For each dip of the needle she follows it with the soothing touch of healing, mending the wound inflicted with precision to not disrupt the depositing of ink. Still, small droplets well up now and again, and she goes over certain areas several times, the auracite stinging as it settles into his skin.

He has only submitted to this kind of binding once before, and it was so long ago he forgot how it _felt_. Which is to say, the pain is ever-present, heady and sweetly intoxicating. It feels good, to be under her hands like this, to be at the receiving end of her attention and care. To notice how she holds her breath when moving the needle, sometimes for up to five dips at once, and to feel it flutter against his skin on the heavy exhale. She is so close to him that he can feel the heat of her body.

The needle she has been using to push the ink under his skin digs a bit too deep, and he hisses at the surge of diluted auracite in him.

“Sorry,” she says, pressing her hand down on top of it. “Almost done.” It is the first time she has looked up at him since she started working hours ago, and her expression softens. “I don’t think I have ever seen you blush before.”

He raises an eyebrow, smirking.

“It just looks good on you, is all.” She bows her head and removes her hand, the bleeding having stopped. “I wish we had done things differently.”

Her words come out of nowhere, and he keeps still and quiet, hoping to draw her out more, get her to say more. She doesn’t, the needle resuming its progress across his skin, closing the last circle.

Sweat pearls on her forehead as she throws the final needle in a bin and leans back, wiping the ink stains off her hands.

“There. It’s done. Give it a go.”

They do not look like much. Thin white lines, drawn in precise circles after hours of painstaking dipping, barely perceptible against his skin. The aether flows through him as normal, but the force he can exert is muted. Just as he knew it would be.

He is bound, not only to this vessel, but to her hand. Only she will be able to break the binding on him. Only she will be able to set him free.

* * *

She comes several times a day, since no one else wants to. The Baldesion woman tried her hand at drawing out information from him, but she did not get particularly far in that regard. He is not interested in speaking to any of them besides the Warrior, but she has been quite reticent since the tattooing session.

In the morning, she comes down with a tray of breakfast foods, her hair in a mussed braid and eyes bleary from sleep. She never says anything in the morning, just grunts, waves him off and leaves.

Around lunch she is usually in a much more talkative mood. Sometimes, he can even bribe her to stay a while if he offers her the dessert on his tray. He can tell she is not sleeping well, the circles under her eyes getting more prominent and the tension strung tight in her body.

“Eat,” he says, pushing whatever patisserie of the day he has been offered over to her. “You need it.”

“I’m fine,” she says even as she takes it. He loves to watch her lick her fingertips clean, the expression when she is savouring the sweets one of utter indulgence.

Often, she is already on the way somewhere, a bounce in her step and eagerness to leave the chill of his room.

At dinner she may talk to him. Or she may sit and read in silence. Or she nods off in the armchair, dirt on her boots and the smell of the road on her clothes. He almost likes those moments the most, just watching the constant furrow between her brows relax into a moment of rest.

When she does, he reaches across the coffee table and takes the book she is reading from her lap, flipping through the pages to see what she is reading. She has a terrible habit of treating books like a journal, with small notes in margins and on blank pages, as well as marking passages by folding the corners down or underlining them. It is a wonder the Scions have not revoked her right to borrow their tomes yet.

When she wakes up from those all too short naps, she looks at him so curiously. As if she’s expecting something from him. Then she will realize what time it is and hurry upstairs.

The last meal of the day is a light evening meal, often just tea and whatever she found in the kitchen — fruits, a sandwich, some leftover tarts. She makes the tea too strong, and he tells her as much. She tells him to go fuck himself, but she does it with a slight smile. It is almost endearing.

The tea is still awful, though.

It is a comfortable rhythm. Safe, cautious and terribly _boring._

At least she brings him books when he asks for them. He has worked his way through most of the tomes the Scions are willing to lend him, restrictive as they are. As if there is any knowledge under the sun worth having that he has not already perused.

When he complains to her about it, she sighs. “Do you want something new to read then? I’m going to the bookshop today.”

“If you would be so kind,” he says, pushing the luncheon chocolate croissant over to her.

“You know, you don’t have to give this to me every day.” She picks it up, licking a stray chocolate piece off her thumb.

“But I want to.”

After her first bite a few flakes stick to her cheek, and he reaches over to brush them off. Her ears twitch, and she puts down the croissant, leaving without another word.

He scowls, frustrated with how everything between them seems to have stalled out in the safe, dull routine. She is behaving like a terrified doe every time he tries to bridge the gap.

That night she delivers a pile of books, wrapped up in paper. She does not meet his eyes as she puts them on the desk, clearing away the tray of dinner and leaving a light evening meal for him in its place.

“Thank you,” he calls after her, and she nods before the door locks behind her.

He tries the tea — still too strong — and ignores the sandwiches stacked together in place in favor of perusing what she bought him. Opening the scarlet book at the top of the pile titled _Entering the Emperor_ , he flips through the first couple of pages, eyebrows rising as his eyes skim over the paragraphs. Interesting. Interesting indeed. It would seem she has brought him erotica.

The dialogue is trite, regrettably, given to poetic license the like of what Urianger would spout in his best moments, but the acts themselves… My, oh my. He had an inkling, but he did not know the full depth of it.

She has placed her fantasies right in his lap, in their full depraved glory.

How utterly _delicious_ they are.

When she arrives with breakfast in the morning, he is already up and dressed, sat at the desk with the book in his lap and cover obscured by the folds of his robe.

“I must thank you for the new books you brought me yesterday, they have been very entertaining.”

“I’m glad,” she says, yawning as she puts down the tray on the desk. “Did you read them all already?”

“Indeed. Let me share a choice quote with you, this one in particular kept me up into the small hours. ‘ _How fair he was, she thought to herself, placing the gag in his mouth, his alabaster skin shining like fresh snowfall in the soft light of the boudoir. Long had she yearned to see the emperor like this, on his knees before her. Long had she dreamed about the things she would do to him and his exquisite arse._ ’ From Entering the Emperor, by Misty Reigns. Oh, I like this bit too —”

She snaps her fingers and the book is burnt to ash in his hands within the blink of an eye.

He brushes the ashes off his lap, rising from the seat. “Touchy. Really, my dear, if this is what you read in your spare time, I need you to pick up some of the classics. Though I suspect you read these not for their literary merits, but for their sinful contents.”

“So what if I do?” she snarls, crossing her arms over her chest.

“There is no need to be prickly,” he says, circling around the desk to stand near her, his gloved hand barely a thumb’s width away from the exposed skin of her thigh. “Though there is a distinct lack of literary qualities that I prefer in my texts, I would be remiss to not mention that the very acts themselves are… Exhilarating.”

Her muscles shift, her stance softening just a sliver. Good. He has her attention.

He leans in towards her, a lone finger trailing her hard jawline. “Weary warrior… You are holding back so much anger.”

She snaps her teeth at him, baring them in all their sharp glory. “Thinking yourself a clever shit for seeing that, aren’t you?”

He grins, shifting closer despite the looming threat of her sinking her teeth into his neck. “How much do you yearn to let it go, hmm? To take it out on someone deserving?” He dares to brush his lips against her cheek, just a little, lowering his voice as he speaks. “How long and _hard_ have you thought about punishing me for what I put you through?”

His words hit home. She inhales sharply, the way she looks at him changing. Ah, so this is what she has been waiting and hoping for. He should have figured it out sooner.

“If you are inclined to the things I think you are, we have much to benefit from each other,” he purrs. “Let me paint you a picture: you could have me on my knees, begging for you. And you could make me work for it. I could be at your mercy.” His hand touches her elbow, fingers tracing a circle around it. “But would you show me any? I would not mind either way.”

Her tongue darts out and wets her lips, and she glances at him for a brief moment. Her pupils are dilated, moving from his lips to his eyes and then his neck and further down. The temptation has found root, he can tell as much.

Still, she has enough presence of mind to tear herself away. Remarkable.

“Please do consider my offer, dear.”

“What, to fuck you?”

“Yes,” he says simply, and whatever retort was poised on her tongue dies as she glares at him before slamming the door shut behind her.

He cannot help but laugh at her all too obvious frustration. All in all, a very productive morning.

The rest of his meals that day are delivered by guards. He figured as much was a risk, but the idea is no doubt percolating in that pretty head of hers, festering and infecting her with feverish fantasies of what she could be doing to him. The indecent book plunged fearlessly into many dark depths. No doubt her thoughts spiralling down there too.

She does not deign to return until late in the night when dawn is just yalms away from the horizon, but when she does, she is a vision — dressed in a black suit, the top buttons of her white shirt undone and the jacket draped over one shoulder.

“Well well,” he says, taking in her appearance shamelessly. “You clean up nice. Far from your usual get-up for adventuring.”

“You have never given me a reason to dress up before,” she says, shrugging off the coat and folding it over the back of a chair. “At best, you made me ruin a good pair of shoes down at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Do you want me to apologize?”

“Out of all the things you should be apologizing for, you would make it about a pair of boots.” She smiles, hesitating for a moment. Her mouth opens, closes as she thinks better of it, and then she breathes in deep. “If we are going to do this, I want to discuss the parameters.”

“You want to negotiate the kinks, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a list?”

Of course she has a list. He should not have asked.

She fishes up a folded piece of paper from her pocket and he snaps it out of her hands. “Hey!” she protests, but he teleports just far enough away to be able to look over it in peace without her taking it back. Whenever she makes a lunge at him, he teleports again, dangling the list out of her reach as he reads it out loud.

“Oh my dear hero, I had no idea your predilections ran this deep,” he says with a laugh, dancing out of her grasp as she grows more frustrated. “Your perversions would make spoiled kings blush. Though you are not out for kings, are you, but emperors…”

With a growl she tackles him by the waist and pins him to the floor, straddling him and holding his hands down as she rips the list back from him.

He smiles up at her, admiring the intensity of her expression in this moment, how even in the depths of her frustration with him she struggles not to smile widely. She is fond of their little games, and it is plain for him to see. “I agree,” he says.

“To which ones?”

“All of them.”

She raises her eyebrows. “That isn't much of a negotiation. You can say no, you know.”

“I have lived for a long, long time. When I say yes, I mean it.”

Letting his hands go, she sits back on his thighs. “One of the reasons things went to shit before is because we were not forthright with each other. I don’t want to be in any grey zones on this. You are giving me a tremendous amount of power and I want to be sure that you are doing this of your own will.” She places a hand on his chest. “I need you to understand how important that is to me.”

“My mind is still my own,” he says, covering her hand with his. “All you have done is put a dampener on the powers I can wield, which, may I remind you, was my idea. If I did not consent to being kept like this, I would have left long ago.”

“Do our wards actually do anything to keep you in?”

“They give you and your Scions peace of mind. Is that not good enough?”

She groans. “Give me strength…”

He hooks a finger into the lining of her shirt and tugs her down nearer to his face. “I believe we were discussing ways towards that end.”

“Well. Yes. I don’t want to take advantage of you—“

“You are not,” he says firmly.

“Mmm. I do often think about how good it would feel to hurt you. To have you begging, and to deny you the relief you crave.”

“Then why not partake of some well-earned succor?”

“Because it’s an incredibly stupid idea to start a tryst with you.”

“You keep denying yourself what you want, what you truly want. Would it be so terrible to just chase your own bliss for a while? Indulge a little.” He strokes her chin with his fingertips, urging her closer to his lips. “Indulge in me.”

“You’ll be the death of me,” she sighs against his mouth before seizing it in a hard kiss, a kiss that is more teeth and force than anything else.

He responds eagerly, clinging to her shirt collar as they seal their fate with a kiss. Though he would be reluctant to admit it to her, lest she draw some smug satisfaction from it, he has craved to do this with her for far too long. He wants to touch every part of her, to explore her body and trace each tattoo he has not seen yet — but all in due time.

She nips at his lower lip, drawing a bit of blood, and her tongue laps at it before pushing back into his mouth, sharing the taste with him.

When she ends the kiss he lays still on the floor for a few moments before pulling himself to sit against the wall, scowling as he watches her take her jacket.

“Leaving already?”

“I am tired from the party.” She looks down at him, at how his legs are spread, and smiles wickedly as her eyes move upward. “Don’t tell me I had such an effect on you.”

“You tempt a starved man.”

She nudges her foot between his legs, biting her lower lip as she feels out the curve of his hard-on. He inhales sharply, holding his breath as she presses down her booted toe on it, just a little to draw a groan from him. His hand wraps around her ankle, holding on and urging her to press down harder as he surges his hips upwards.

“So needy.” Leaning down over him, she grabs his chin and tilts his head up, forcing his mouth open. “I cannot wait to see you begging.”

“You will have to work hard for that.”

“Will I?” Her foot presses down harder and a guttural moan escapes his mouth. She laughs, biting his lip again but denying him the pleasure of a kiss… Or release, as she removes herself from him. “We will see, _dearest_. We will see.”


	2. Chapter 2

Emet-Selch dared to get his hopes up after their little negotiation. Foolish, really. Ever since he first met her she has done this little dance of just being interested enough to keep him wrapped around her finger, and then putting distance between them.

You’d think making it clear that you want her to raw you would change something, anything.

Instead, she just goes back to the same boring routine, delivering him food and books.

It is driving him up the wall.

He lasts three days of it, tired of waiting — he has waited for thousands of years for her, and she is mortal and closer to dying than living forever — and he can feel her watching him when his back is turned. Her gaze has a weight to it, how it bores through him. How it calls to him.

When she settles down in the armchair with a book _yet again_ he has had enough. He pulls the books from her hands and before she can protest he straddles her lap and leans his arms on the back of the chair, caging her in.

“I was reading that,” she says with a sigh.

“Ah yes, the great literary masterpiece of…” He glances at the cover. “Well. I will give you that this one is actually good.” He throws it over his back and slides closer to her face. “But you have been ignoring me.”

She smirks. “Does it bother you so much?”

“I thought we had reached an accord.”

Her hands are fast — he always forget just how fast Viera can be when they care enough to, and her fingers have worked themselves past his robe, one hand cupping his member through the taut fabric of his trousers while her other hand supports her chin as if she is doing nothing at all. As if they are just having a pleasant, engaging conversation even though she is definitely pressuring his dick to get him hard.

“Mmm. So we had. How very remiss of me. How could I be so cruel as to neglect you?”

He narrows his eyes. “I see. You wanted me to do this.”

“Perhaps I like them needy.” She digs her nails into the fabric until he hisses. “Perhaps I like to see you _need_ me.”

As he exhales, he lets his robe melt away from his body, but she looks unimpressed.

“Shirt too.”

With a shrug it falls off him like water, and she flashes a small, close-lipped smile, her fingers plucking at the laces of his breeches agonizingly slow. When he tries to speed her up she swats at his wrist, and he glares at her hand, willing it to move faster, to get to the damn point already.

And she slows just as she almost has it freed. He bites his tongue, willing the needy noise to die before it escapes.

“What is your safe word?” she asks, her fingertip skimming along the trail of hair on his stomach.

“Lahabrea.”

She stops her movements entirely. “Absolutely not. Pick another.”

“You have no sense of humor.” He has to rile her a little, if she is going to be this impossible. “Fine. Sunshine.”

“Sunshine,” she repeats, nodding. “Good. Though not something I expected to hear from you.”

“You’d be surprised.”

She pushes his pants down just enough to free half his member and closes her fingers around it, causing him to draw in a sharp breath between his teeth. Her fingers are cold and his flesh is so hot.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you. Let me hear it.”

“I want you to fuck me.”

“The great poets would weep at your lack of embellishment.” She licks her hand while maintaining eye contact, and then returns it to his cock.

This time he whimpers and thrusts up into her hand, then catches himself and laughs it off.

“Now please, if you would. Tell me something beautiful. Tell me what I am going to do to you.”

He tries to kiss her to get her to shut up, but she grabs his chin and holds him at just enough of a distance to deny him that. There is no way of getting out of it, and he really, _really_ wants her to keep touching him.

“I want you to fuck me like I don’t deserve anything else,” he says, meeting her eyes.

She rewards him with a stroke down and up, then waits.

“I want you to take all the pleasure you want from me.”

Her grip tightens, and he cannot stop himself — he needs this, needs her to touch him and he starts to spill out depraved fantasies after fantasies, half-formed things circulating around ropes and him on his knees and _her, her, her_ at the center of all of them, her holding all his needs and desires in the palm of her hand and doing whatever she wants with them. _With him._

A knock at the door interrupts them but her hand remains on his cock.

“Yes?” she calls out.

“Are you busy?”

He arches an eyebrow and moans. She quickly cuts him off by putting three fingers in his mouth, pushing them all the way in to the third knuckle.

“Not at all.”

Rich, considering she has one hand in his mouth and one wrapped around his cock, still languidly stroking it as if nothing else interests her.

“We have a situation upstairs that could use your attention.”

“How urgent?”

“Quite.”

“I’ll be up shortly.”

She lets go of him, pulls her fingers out of his mouth and wipes them dry on his chest, pushing him off her.

“I’ll be back sometime later,” she says, brushing off her hands. “Leave that… For me. If you’d be so kind.”

He will absolutely not.

When she returns in the evening, he lays draped on the bed, languid and relaxed, reading an Allagan epistolary novel he once favoured, though the translations have certainly decayed in accuracy over the years.

She taps her foot on the floor, tsking when she sees him. “I see you did not heed my request.”

“It was not one I felt inclined to obey, no,” he drawls, closing the book and sitting up on the edge of the bed. “Really now, if you leave me like that, what do you expect out of me? Especially as bound to this flesh as I am. A man has needs.”

“But does he have rights, is the question.” She tilts his head up, her fingertips poised underneath his chin as she regards him with lust-darkened eyes as her lips touch his, her tongue urging his mouth open. Pulling back a little, she narrows her eyes and spits in his mouth.

The humiliation of it makes his cock twitch with need and he inhales sharply, swallowing it down.

“Good boy.” She pulls him up to standing so that he is flush against her. “You are mine to play with tonight.”

He toys with the lapels of her jacket, feigning as if he is giving it deep thought though all his mind can focus on is the hard curve at her groin pressing against him. “I am.”

“And you promise to use the safe word if it becomes too much?”

He smirks. “Your sudden concern for my safety is noted.”

“Good. Strip.”

With a snap of his fingers he’s naked, and she shakes her head, though she seems amused.

“No appreciation for the art of teasing,” she says, tugging him along to an open space in the room. Ropes of aether coil around Emet-Selch’s limbs as she guides his hands behind his back. “You will let me know if it’s too tight?”

“You can go tighter than this.”

She laughs, a soft and endearing noise.

The ropes float upwards, weaving through a fixture in the ceiling and lifting him off the floor. The added pressure of hanging like this sends a shudder through his body.

She takes one of his legs and folds it, tying him ankle to thigh, while the other hangs down. If he stretches it, his toes just about skim the floor, but not enough to feel balanced on it. With another adjustment, she tilts him forward, and the shift of weight makes the ropes dig into his chest, reminding him of how constrained he is like this.

She circles around him, her fingertips dragging along his exposed body, testing each knot now that he is suspended. She tightens some, and loosens none. Her handiwork is exquisite, and does not give even when he tests it with a few wriggles.

He hears the rustle of clothing being shed, but no matter how he tries to, he cannot get into a position to _watch_. Her laughter bounces in the room, her heels clicking against the floor as she comes back to him.

She stops between his spread legs, thumb swiping across the tip of his engorged member and coming away coated with the droplets that have gathered there already. Moving around to his front, she brings her thumb to his lips and presses it into his mouth, making him taste his own salty pre. He closes his lips around the digit, his tongue stroking along the underside of it.

“Gods, you have a pretty mouth,” she says, wet thumb stroking over his lips. “But shutting you up has been on my mind forever.” She pushes his head down until he is face to face with her strap-on.

The artificial phallus is big, much to his thrilled pleasure. It fills his mouth and his jaw aches, but he tries to take it all the way. She jerks her hips forward and it slides to the back of his throat and deeper, and then she holds him still there. Drool drips from his mouth, and he gags around it, but she holds him in a hard grip, making it impossible to move.

Not that he exactly would want to.

“You’re making a mess.” She slaps his cheek lightly, then mirrors it on the other side, but harder. Her actions are growing more confident as she steps more and more into the role she has been aching to play so long.

When she pulls out he gasps for air, gagging, and then she pushes in again, fucking his throat. It hurts, in a way that he enjoys, a heady thrill of only being used for her entertainment.

Her fingernails rake across his scalp and dig in, pulling at his hair as she thrusts forward. Spit dribbles down his chin and tears well up at the corner of his eyes and yet she gives him no reprieve to gather himself up, just pushing and pushing him until he is moaning around the dildo.

The way she is treating him is leaving him painfully, achingly hard.

“I think that’s good and wet,” she murmurs, pulling out of his mouth after one final deep thrust. He coughs and spits on the floor, drool coating his chin.

She crouches in front of him, searching his face for any sign of distress or dislike, her eyes asking him the quiet question: _is this alright?_

He nods, trembling slightly but flashes her a smile. It is more than alright. It is _excellent._

She strokes his forehead tenderly and gets up, circling back around behind him to knead his ass.

“I always wondered what you were hiding beneath those robes,” she says, squeezing hard. “Not bad.”

“You could have just asked, I would gladly have shown you.”

She laughs, spreading him apart. He can feel the wet dildo against the inside of his thigh, moving with her breathing.

Cool oil drips down between his cheeks, and she follows with a single slim finger massaging it against his entrance. With just a bit of pressure the muscle relaxes and she slides in, curling it downwards.

“It would indeed seem you know a thing or two about pleasuring an emperor,” he says, but his voice falters as another finger joins the first and hooks down. He writhes, trying to find enough purchase to push back, to deepen the sensation of heat building in him.

Her fingers pull out and he groans with need, frustrated that she would play him like this.

“Stop whining,” she says, sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of his ass, then following it up with a gentle kiss on top of the aching bite marks.

Oil-slick fingers close around his throbbing cock, and then the two fingers return in his ass, and oh, _oh_. It seems those books have given her some very interesting ideas on what she wants to do to him, and he does not mind it one bit.

“Ask before you come.”

“You expect me to beg — ah!”

The way her fingers press into him, she may actually get what she wants if she keeps this up. He strains against the ropes, trying to fuck himself harder on her fingers, but she is not having it.

“Ask. _Me_ ,” she snarls, underscoring her point by digging her nails into his skin.

Even as she says that, her fingers tighten around his member, and it takes every ounce of his willpower to keep from shooting his seed all over her hand right then.

“I am not a beggar,” he growls, though another part of him is keening to let go of his pride and just fucking beg her because he is so close and her hand is so warm and slick and he wonders, vaguely, how similar it would feel to sink into her sometime —

Before she can give or deny him permission she presses harder into him and he comes, moaning loudly as he thrusts into her fingers. Even as she milks the very last drop out of him with slow, hard strokes of her hand, she tuts at him.

“Disappointing. Aren’t you the one lording your superiority over me every chance you get, but you can’t even obey a simple command?” Her hands leave him, and he gapes empty.

The lack of physical contact makes him whine, much to his own annoyance. He wanted to make her work hard for it, but here he is, filled with so much need and aching yearning and she can twist it out of him with so little.

It’s like she still knows him, even when she doesn’t remember. Like she never forgot the language of his body, the map of his pleasures.

“You see this dildo? I would have fucked you with it. I would have fucked you long, and slow, and taken my time with you. I would have wrung you out.” She undoes the straps around her waist and hips, letting the leather harness fall to the floor. “But you did not listen to me. And now you get to merely watch.”

She pulls up an armchair and seats herself in front of him, pulling her knees up and spreading her legs. She pushes the silken underwear to the side, and he takes note of how wetly they glisten in the candlelight.

Running a finger along the slit, she holds up her fingertips in front of his mouth, smearing the wetness on his lips. He eagerly laps at it, tries to suck her fingers in between his teeth and bite down, but she is faster than that.

She puts one of her feet up on his shoulder, causing him to sway a little as the sharp heel digs into his flesh. He has nowhere else to look but at her, at her pussy as she spreads the lips apart and finally, _finally reveals_ herself to him.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathes, drinking in deep of the sight in front of him, of the swollen clit begging to be sucked, of the soft folds he wants to lick and taste and savor. “Lower me. Let me taste you.”

She flicks her fingers up at him, a lone drop landing on the ridge of his nose. “You messed up. You get nothing.”

He is not one to be deterred that easily. “Let me be the one to please you.” The scent alone is making him hard again. The wetness dripping from her… How he wishes he could lap it up, drink it down.

She takes her time pushing the dildo in, moaning loudly as the head slips inside, her muscles trembling slightly. She does not take it further than halfway before moving it out, thrusting in lightly and settling into a slow rhythm, head lolling back against the headrest.

He can smell her, he can see the sweat on her brow as she works herself closer. But he can also see how she is tensing up, how the rhythm stutters, how her eyebrows furrow.

She lets out a soft sigh, pulling the toy out without coming. The ropes that hold him in suspension fall undone, and he sinks slowly to his knees on the floor, arms still bound behind his back.

“Make use of your mouth then,” she says, beckoning him to her.

Before his tongue can touch her, she yanks at his hair and pulls him away a little. “Just. Don’t make me come. Okay?”

He quirks an eyebrow but doesn’t push it. Not when he is this close. “Very well.”

“I don’t…” She exhales, shrugging as she drops whatever she was about to say. “Just don’t.”

He kisses the inside of her thigh, taking his time approaching, drawing in deep of her unique, musky scent. It fills his nostrils, heady and potent, and he is so hard by the time his tongue brushes against her. He wants to disobey her, wants to lock his lips around the clit and suck until she screams and bucks and comes into his mouth, but something about her tone left the impression on him that she is not in the mood.

Another time. Another time, he will have her on his face and he will make her ride it until he drowns.

For now, he obediently laps up the wetness, cleaning her with his tongue. She watches him with her jaw set, biting her lower lip in the way she does when she is mulling something over. He has only seen it when her darling Scions are discussing strategies and plans, and he wants to know what wicked idea she is entertaining.

“Lie down,” she commands, shoving him away from her.

He does as told, face down on the floor and ass up in the air, hopeful and eager.

Her heels click click click, followed by the sound of buckles sliding into place. A thick, cool drizzle hits his back and slides down, her fingers spreading him apart and letting it flow into him as he shudders from the sensation.

The head of the dildo presses against him and it aches for a moment as she slides in and she does not stop until she is entirely hilted, a move that wrenches a moan out of him. He barely has time to adjust to how full he feels before she pulls out almost all the way, and then slams back into him.

His cheek scrapes against the cold stones on the floor, the rough jerks of her hips making him alternate between feeling deliciously full and painfully empty, weaving into each other so tightly. Heat coils in his belly, and he cannot bite back the moans as she ups the pace.

He is so close, so damnably close to coming, her name on the tip of his tongue and _she pulls out_.

She pulls out and he aches, he is so open and raw and aching for her to fill him up again as deep as she can go and she is _not even touching him right now_. He cannot keep his posture anymore, a growl of deep frustration choked into the floor.

“Beg.”

Her nails rake across his asscheeks, down the back of his thighs, and he quivers, the pain shooting through him from head to toe.

“Beg or I will leave you like this.”

She grabs his hair, pulling him up hard.

“Please,” he chokes out, crumbling with how much he needs release. “Please fuck me.”

“More.”

“I need your cock in me.”

The aether shifts behind him and as she spreads him apart he finds out why: she made it thicker.

It hurts, in the most delicious way, in the way he craves, and before she can get halfway into him he pushes himself back onto the length of it, moaning.

She laughs, holding still as she strokes his back.

“Fuck yourself on it.”

He hates her. He is sure of it.

He drags himself up and down the length of it, slamming back down as hard as he can manage. He is not far off but he almost wishes he was, the size of this dildo hitting places in him that wrenches ancient, familiar feelings and sounds out of him. She is peeling him apart, little by little, finding her way to a core he has tried to bury for so long and she hits it with such ease.

And she doesn't even know. She doesn’t. Know. Anything.

“Look at you. So desperate to get fucked. So desperate to be used.”

No, he amends: she knows how to make him feel _good_.

She meets him on the down thrust and he tumbles over the edge, coming for the second time that night.

“Done?” Her voice rasps out the tender question, her breath more labored than he noticed before.

He nods, and the ropes fall away from his body. She gently and slowly pulls out of him, but he still shivers with how hollow he feels after the dildo is gone from him. His joints ache, sore and tender, but she strokes her hands along his spine and cool healing magick streams from her fingertips into him.

“No,” he mutters, waving her magick off. He wants the ache. He wants to feel it. It makes him feel alive. It reminds him of many things, and he wants that miasma to cloud his thoughts right now.

To his surprise she scoops him up off the floor, hoisting him over her shoulder and carrying him to the bed where she deposits him carefully. She is far stronger than he thought, all that lean, toned muscle hidden under her clothing all this time.

He watches her as she grabs a wet washcloth from the bathroom and wipes the sweat and seed off his body, and he watches as she takes off the strap-on and frees herself from her undergarments with a content sigh before laying down next to him.

She looks at him and smiles. “It feels so strange to do this,” she confesses.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I loved it. I loved to be cruel to you.”

His hand traces over her chest, following the lines of a tattoo he has never seen before: a wreath of tentacles that unfold up between her breasts and curl out over them. Usually she is so covered up, all these works of art hidden from view.

One length of a tentacle ends right at the areola of her right breast, and his fingertip brushes over the nipple. It hardens underneath his touch and she sighs softly, her hand petting his hair.

“If you keep being this nice to me it’s going to be harder to be mean to you.”

“It’s called aftercare. You need it.” Being cruel, even when it is asked for, takes a toll. He knows as much. He knows the value of reminding her that he enjoyed it, that he still likes her, that he still wants her to ruin him every moment she feels like it.

_Take me and do as you please._

His hand slides over to her other breast, circling the nipple as he closes his lips over the closest one, sucking gently.

“Did you think about saying sunshine? Even once?”

He looks up at her, nipple still in his mouth, and shakes his head gently. She laughs, covering her face with her arm, the other hand still tangled in his hair as he keeps sucking and laving at her breast, his teeth just grazing the sensitive bud in his mouth.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m both worried and excited how far I’ll go before you utter it.”

He licks a stripe up her breast, sinking his teeth into the curve of it, just enough to leave a small mark right over her heart. “Don’t be. I trust you.”

She pushes his hair back from his face, pulling him up to her mouth. “That may be the stupidest or sweetest thing you have ever said to me. I’m not sure which.”

He has a reply ready — _I trust you because I always have_ — but she kisses it out of him, and he lets himself melt into her, lets her kiss him until they are both drifting into dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking of [this tattoo](https://www.inkedmag.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTU5MDMzMDMwMzIzODczNTYw/tentacles.jpg) when describing the one on her chest.


	3. Chapter 3

A week.

A damned, cursed full week.

She leaves the Rising Stones for a week and Emet-Selch only has books to keep him company. And the hefty endowment fund she left him with instructions to the guards to buy whatever he requests, admittedly. Like he is some kept house husband, or pet.

She keeps finding new ways to bore and deny him.

Does she think time passes faster for him just because he can live eternally if he wants to? It passes the same for him, minute by minute, day by day. He has already endured so many of them without her.

He spends half the funds she left him on filling the bathroom shelves with things he absolutely does not need, but having spent so many years playing the role of mortal, he has gotten attached to certain comforts.

There is a particular pleasure to the right perfume, as she so often reminds him when he catches a whiff of hers. And yet another to having soaps, creams and washes lining the shelf, if for nothing else the sheer aesthetic joy of it.

The days pass and he grows more restless.

The magick he can command, restrained as it may be, he uses to re-shape the measly interior decor of his quarters to something more suited for his tastes: red velvet and golden trimmings, actual paintings instead of drab scientific posters, ebony desk solid enough for three people on top of it — if only she would ever feel so inclined.

One of the paltry armchairs he extends to a chaise-lounge, plush and luxurious, and the other into a couch. He takes his time adjusting the height, working from memory of where his face is in proportion to her height when he kneels before her.

It is a work of perfection, he thinks. His attention to detail, when he cares about it, is flawless. He was not the Architect of the Convocation for nothing.

The work exhausts him, drains him enough that he can at least sleep a few more hours away, but there is still the tedium of waiting. Books can only entertain him for so long, especially when the libraries of Mor Dhona slant far more towards research and Allagan history (their extrapolations are laughably incorrect, but he does not care enough about contrived assumptions surrounding a fallen empire to amend them) than anything truly thrilling. Even the erotica is bland to him, not least of all for how the flowery language makes him roll his eyes.

He plain and simple misses her. It is a different kind of longing than the thousands of thousands of years spent apart, because now he knows her, knows who she is now, and above all: she knows him. He knows what her lips feel like on his skin and it fuels a horrid fever within him.

By the time she finally comes back, the room is barely recognizable from what it was before, and he watches her bemused reaction as she takes it all in.

She walks over to the desk, putting down a bag on top of it and then begins pulling her leather gloves off, one finger at a time. “Bored, were you?”

“Is it not obvious?” He catches her hand and removes the glove for her, delighting in the feeling of her skin against his. Bringing her hand to his mouth he kisses the back of it, then traces her knuckles with his lips, kissing each in turn. When he has paid his tribute to them, he turns her hand so he can kiss her palm, his teeth digging into the soft flesh below her thumb.

“Annoyed too, I see.”

“You rile me up and then leave me to wither in this dark, cold cellar. What am I to think of such deplorable treatment? Am I not worthy of you?”

He licks over the bite marks he inflicted, dragging his tongue up towards her index finger.

“A smidge.” She studies his face and wrinkles her nose, her hand out of his grasp before he can suck on her fingers, gripping his face and twisting it to the side. “And yet you did not find the time to shave. Now that is deplorable.”

It’s true. He may have neglected one of the finer details in her time away, petty and frustrated as he has been.

“We should get rid of this stubble.”

He cannot deny the excited thrum in him as she drags him by his shirt collar into the bathroom, and leans him back against the sink as she rummages around in the cabinets for what she needs.

“I see you stocked up,” she remarks dryly, holding up one of the moisturizing cream jars.

“Not like you left me with much else to do.”

“I’m not apologizing to you for doing my job.” She fishes out a razor, a cup and brush and starts mixing together shaving cream.

“A little remorse wouldn’t kill you, would it?”

She barks out a harsh laugh, waiting for the water to turn hot. “I haven’t felt remorseful over you once before, I am not going to start now.”

He presses his face against her neck, mouthing at her skin. “You wound me.” He tries to kiss her lips, but she rebukes him gently with the back of her hand.

With a heavy sigh, he slumps back against the counter, waiting for her. Still! She is right in front of him, he has ached for her presence, and still she insists on this.

Soaking the towel, she wrings it out of excess water and presses it to his skin. The contact is… Not enough, however warm and pleasant it is. Yes, he feels the constant presence of heat pooling, of blood thrumming loudly in him, but she is not giving him enough. He wants, and wants, and she does not give.

She stipples a cover of shaving cream on his face, taking her sweet time to not miss a single spot. 

She unfolds the straight razor, weighing it in one hand as she runs her gaze over his cheek and chin, deciding on where to begin. Her hand comes to rest at his lower neck, fingers pressing down and holding him still.

When she puts the blade against the side of his throat it sends a shiver down his spine, the cool edge moving along his skin in slow and short strokes. His lips part as she runs it along the jawline, breathing in painfully slowly so as not to disturb her precise work. The slow drag, the seconds where he drags in a deep breath as she cleans off the blade, and then the moment when the blade returns to his skin.

“Be still,” she whispers, her voice dropping as low as when she was tattooing him, her focus solely on his body and skin and how not to injure him. Her hands move his face, angling it one way and then the other, inspecting him like prized goods she wants to keep intact.

She moves the blade over his neck, following the column of it with a gentle hand. She holds it there, and he notices how she is breathing in deeper, her tongue wetting her lower lip. Her eyes flick up to meet his and he almost loses himself in her gaze: it's hunger, yes, and lust, but the raw and tender care underneath that… He can hardly breathe.

The moment passes, and she drags the blade up under his chin before rinsing it off in the basin.

It is overwhelming how vulnerable this body is in her hands. Having been bound to it, he feels it so much clearer, all its limitations and weaknesses. He feels the pulse of his neck beating loud as the blade drags slowly over it, how he has to hold absolutely still or else. The fact that she holds him so tenderly, that she does not lash out but only cares for him — it makes his chest tighten.

It makes him _ache_.

He swallows as she brings the razor up over his apple, and the blade nicks his skin. She presses a finger to the tiny cut, her hands coming away tinged red as she reaches past him to draw fresh water and wash her hands.

“My bad,” he says, his nose tip moving against her cheek.

“You? Admitting to a flaw?”

“Don’t get used to it.”

Her lips part slightly when she runs the razor’s blade along his jaw, the final stroke before she runs a finger under his chin, tilting his face up. “There.” She cleans his skin with the towel, and then takes him by the chin and turns his face to the right and then left, running her fingers over his now smooth skin.

“Preparing a throne for yourself?” he asks, smirking.

“Maybe so.” She slaps his skin, lightly, but even that is enough to make his cock strain against his clothes. “At least it will be easier to kiss you now. I don’t like the tickle of stubble.”

He thinks, finally, finally, his body screaming with need to feel her lips against his, to press his tongue against hers — and she. Pulls. Away.

“Ah ah. Stay there. I got you a gift, to make up for being gone so long.”

He throws his head back, fingers digging into the edge of the sink so hard he feels the bones strain. Maybe she should have killed him properly. It might have been less suffering than this.

When she returns and undoes the black velvet cloth wrapping, he cannot help but inhale sharply, mesmerized by what she has brought for him.

A delicate gold collar, the exact size of his neck, unadorned save for a small o-ring at the front.

“May I?”

He nods, his mouth too dry to speak.

She undoes the clasp and places it around his neck, the locking mechanism sliding shut with a soft click. Just like that. So simple, and so decisive.

The way it rests against his skin, a cool and constant reminder of how he has bound himself to her, how he has offered himself to her and she in turn has taken him, will keep taking him… It is a silent admission: she wants him here. She wants him with her enough to leave this mark on him.

He groans when she attaches a chain to it, the visual of it all intoxicating. The collar drags down slightly at the front from the added weight, the chain resting on his chest as she looks him over with a satisfied smirk.

She says nothing, and she does not need to. He _belongs to her_ , in a way he has not in a long time. To be hers, like this, at the end of her leash; to be commanded and lorded over.

She wraps the chain around her hand and pulls him close, her lips teasing along his, her breath ghosting his skin in a way that makes him shudder. The heat of desire coils tight in him, but before he can act on it she dips her head and smells his clavicles.

“I like the new perfume. Very you.”

She. Is. _Infuriating_. He has waited for days and days, he has let her shave his stubble off to her desire, has let her toy with him, collar him, and still she won’t kiss him.

He grabs her ass and pulls her towards him, his mouth crashing onto hers, too hungry to care about any potential repercussions now. He wants her taste, he wants her mouth, he wants her to be inside him and surround him and drown everything else out.

Waiting for her, as he has waited for twelve thousand years, is not something he does well.

She lets him kiss her, and he boldly presses her closer to him, sliding a leg between hers so she can feel his erection. He needs her to do something — anything — to him, and soon, because he is delirious with desire and want.

Her tongue is soft against his, and he presses into her mouth, chasing the bliss he has been denied for so long. He savors her, then devours her, the hungry throb of more leaving his entire body aflame for her.

When their mouths part, he does it with a disappointed sigh, even as she gasps for air and her lips are glistening with saliva. Her heavy-lidded eyes regard him coolly but wholly unaffected, and he dares to move in and lick at her lips, drawing the lower one in between his teeth for a light bite. He is rewarded with a moan, a moan that has him digging his fingers into her ass even harder, pushing her up further on his thigh.

“Please,” he whines, baring the depth of his yearning in just a few words, “do something to me. I’m all yours.”

She leads him out into the bedroom, tugging him along on the leash. She laughs when she sees the bed, and the new additions to it.

He changed it to a solid four-poster bed. He knows what he wants from her, and he hopes that she will take advantage.

She plucks at the buttons of his shirt, going slow. When he makes to remove it through magick, she bites his fingers hard, drawing them deep into her mouth for a brief moment.

“Let me enjoy this,” she says, nipping at his fingertips, and he relents with a sigh.

She takes her time undressing him, her hands slipping under the fabric to run over every inch of skin she can, her touch feather-light and horribly teasing. When she touches his nipple he bucks forward into her hand, and it makes her smile before she dips her head down and her lips close around it, sucking. It sends a bolt through his body, straight to his dick, and it is so hard already but her action makes him ache even more.

He digs his fingers into her hips, trying to angle them so she can feel just how much he needs her, how hard and ready he is for her, but she only responds by scraping her teeth against the sensitive skin of his areole.

He hisses, raking his fingers up her sides, tugging at her shirt.

“You are being so cruel,” he admonishes, though his voice carries no gravity, so close to coming undone just from her mouth on him.

Without a word, she continues undressing him, undoing his pants, pushing them down alongside his underwear. When his member springs free of its constraints, it comes to rest against her belly, the head already slick with pre-cum.

She pushes him back onto the bed covers and snaps her fingers, those fine aether ropes snaking their way up his limbs, rearranging his body through her focused attention. He is so charmed that she has started practicing these small sleight of hand aether magicks this way — even if her magick is small and frail compared to his, even if her wielding of it would amount to parlour tricks for children in Amaurot — _she does it_. That is what matters. That is what tugs at his heart.

She laughs when she notices the new additions to the bed. “I see, I see.”

Does she? Does she truly see how willing and ready and desperate he is for her to take him apart and rearrange him? Does she understand how willing he is to alter the world for her?

(And part of it is that he wants her to see, truly see, what he can do, what power he holds. What she used to be. To open up and partake of all she could be.)

With a flick of her finger she does make use of the posts, attaching the ropes to them and pulling them tight. As a final touch, she slips the end of the leash through a metal ring he attached to the side of the bed and pulls it taut so that the collar pins his head flat against the bed.

She leans over him, her hair spilling over her shoulder and tickling his cheek.

“Close your eyes.”

He does as commanded, and is rewarded.

“Good boy,” she coos, brushing his hair away from his forehead.

Something presses against his lips. He parts them, lets his tongue flick against it. Her finger, the sharp edge of a nail scraping against his tongue. This time, she lets him suck them in, spreading two on either side of his tongue with the tip firmly lodged in the dip between them. The skin there is so soft, despite all her battles and hard work, and he teases along it just so he hears her breath tremble a little on the exhale.

The fingers pull out, and he trails his tongue out after them, arcing it upwards hoping to make contact again.

“Keep them closed.” She touches her wet fingers — wet from _his_ mouth, _his_ tongue — to his nipples, drawing circles between them, and he keens, closing his fingers around the ropes pulling his arms away from his torso.

She removes her hand, and he hears the tell-tale sound of clothes being removed, and feels the bed dip as she settles down on it next to him.

“Open wide.”

His tongue flicks out and she gasps at the contact, her weight shifting on the bed. Her nipple. He latches on greedily, sucking as much of her breast into his mouth as he can, working his tongue against that hard, sensitive point. His teeth graze against the skin, and she hisses, flicking her finger against his nose.

“Be good.”

Very well.

He dutifully closes his lips around the nipple, just hard enough to at least hear a soft noise spill from her lips, encouraging him to suckle at it hungrily.

Above all, he wants to please her. He wants to hear her moan, hear her choke on his name as she crests on an orgasm. He wants her to be fulfilled by him, in any way she deigns to use him. He aches with the need to have her gratitude, to have her soft and joyous.

As they once were, long ago.

When he feels her begin to pull away from his mouth, he bites the nipple lightly, trying to keep her, but she does not give in to him.

In fact, she yanks so hard at his hair that he lets it go with a wet pop, breathing heavily from the surge of pain.

Her weight shifts again on the bed, and when her legs brush against his ears he opens his eyes.

She is on her knees above him, naked, her wet slit held apart by her fingers as she lowers herself onto his face.

He lets out a moan before his mouth is full of her.

His tongue delves into her folds, tracing and exploring and _tasting_ above all. She is so warm and soft, her scent all over his face. Pushing his tongue into her entrance he curves it upward, burying his nose in a way so it presses against her clit.

In a better situation, he would have the use of his hands, his fingers pushing into her. In an ideal one, he would have free reign over his own aether, and he would set her nerve endings alight in ways she can scarce dream of.

Still, he is not without a talented mouth.

He moves his tongue out of her and along the slit, tracing the lips, the soft skin folds until he arrives to the hooded clit. Closing his lips around it, he sucks for a brief moment, just enough to feel her buck against his mouth, before he begins licking.

He wants to feel her unravel into his mouth, wants to feel her thighs press against his face — but as he wrings a deep moan out of her, she moves up and out of reach for his tongue. He strains against the ropes, against the chain, but she pulls at it hard enough that he chokes a little.

“Down,” she says, on her knees above him.

He can see the slickness gathering, the way her clit is gleaming wet, but he cannot do anything to her. The cool air of the room makes his face sting, covered in her essence as he is.

He slumps his head back, breathing heavily. “You are taunting me,” he accuses, his voice whinier than he would like, but damn her. Damn her for not letting him have her the way he wants to.

“And what if I am? What can you do about it?”

Nothing. The answer curdles in his belly, hard and cold. He can do nothing if she truly wants to taunt him like this.

Showing him a sliver of mercy, she lowers herself onto his face again, and he is quick to push his tongue into her as deep as it can go. If he had use of his full range of aether, if he was not bound to this vessel’s particular form, he would be sorely tempted to turn into his true form, a tongue long and thick enough to fill her to the brim.

But he is at the end of her leash, and she has full control over him. He feels the chain tugging hard, choking him as she raises her hips away from his mouth, though this time she stays lower — close enough that she is dripping onto his lips.

She knows just how to get under his skin.

“Heartless,” he hisses, even as she pulls on his hair. “Is this all you have learnt? Cruelty?”

“You left me to die,” she says, stroking his cheek. “You taught me all I know about it.”

Before he can reply she sits down on his face.

Of course she has not forgiven him. Of course she does not care to hear apologies. She is angry, and she is punishing him — just as he had suggested.

He just did not realize the depths of it.

So he atones the only way he can, with his mouth, with his tongue, almost frenzied in his desperate attempt to make her come before she can pull away. If he had less pride, he would beg her, tell her that she deserves only pleasure after everything she has been put through — _please, let me give you what you need, let me give you everything_.

When she moves away, sliding down to lie on top of his body, he cannot stop himself. He is so exasperated that he tries to draw on enough aether to break her bonds, but the tattoos she has lined him with are flawless. All he can do is strain, watching her smile smugly at him.

“Use me properly,” he grits out between his teeth, breathing hard and fast.

“Frustrated, dearest?” She drags her tongue over his chest, her teeth grazing his nipples and drawing out an embarrassing, wounded noise from him. “You can just beg. Maybe I will hear your pleas.”

“Sit on my face! Use me! Take your pleasure from me!”

She nuzzles against his neck, her sharp fangs breaking the skin at his shoulder. “No.”

He thrashes underneath her, biting back the growl. She is so close but he cannot touch her, cannot do anything for her, to her — it is all her mouth, her hands, her thighs on either side of his dick, just brushing against him, her cunt out of reach.

It _hurts_.

“Am I being too cruel?” she asks when he bucks hard, rolling off him. This is even worse — no skin contact, no warmth.

“You are being _terrible_.”

“Good.”

The ropes slacken and vanish, and he cautiously rolls over in bed, propped up on his elbows as he watches her.

She leans back against the desk, her bare ass on the wood, the inside of her thighs slick, and she beckons to him.

He does not need to be called over twice.

It takes just six long strides to get to her, to gather her up in his arms and press himself flush against her, pressing his lips to her. She tastes of his blood from when she bit him, and he makes sure she can taste herself, how wet and ready he got her, has he not been good? Has he not been obedient? Has he not given her hope to believe in him?

He is so caught up in the kiss that he does not fully pay attention to where she is manoeuvring him until the sharp tug of ropes pull him down, securing his wrists to the armrests of the desk chair and his ankles to the legs. The ropes dig into his skin, tightening, and still she kisses him, the chain clinking between her fingers as she drapes it over his back.

When she breaks it he snaps his teeth at her, tries to catch her neck with them and bite down hard. Deep down, he knows his behavior is ridiculous, but the frustration she has instilled in him is absolute.

She pushes his knees apart and ropes secure them too, leaving him spread and open before her gaze. Grabbing a cushion from the couch she places it between his feet and a vial from her bag and kneels down between his legs.

“I believe I owe you some relief, do I not?” There is a teasing tone to her voice, to the way her lips quirk into a smile that reveals her teeth.

Spreading oil over her fingers, she positions herself closer, resting one arm on his thigh. Her other hand starts teasing at his entrance, just the absolute tip of a finger slipping in and out before she goes back to circling it.

His pride shatters.

“Please,” he whines, and she obliges with one finger, dragging the pad of it along the spot inside him that has him moaning.

Pre-cum wells up at the tip of his cock and her other hand takes them, spreading them over the length of the shaft, her oiled-up fingers slippery and warm and delightful. He is painfully hard and this, this is the relief he has been aching for.

A second digit joins her first, both of them curving forward against that spot, and it happens so fast. He groans, deep and raw, spilling himself over her hands and breasts.

“Thank you,” he says shakily.

“I am not done yet.”

Her fingers inside him keep up the pressure, but with the added touch of a bit of magick, and he grows hard before he has even flagged fully, groaning at the sensation. It does not take her many minutes before she has him on the verge again, and she mercilessly pushes him over. Her hand is slick with his cum, and it drips down onto her breasts.

He follows the drops as they roll down over the swell of her breasts, over her hard nipples, and he moans again.

And she will not relent.

If he does not grow hard fast enough for her, she uses magick, but nothing else besides her hands. He whines, begging for her lips, her hot wet mouth, anything else on his dick, but she gives him nothing.

His entire body goes taut in the chair, arcing upwards, the chair scraping as he struggles against the restraints holding him down. It is so good and not enough.

He is not full enough. He is not hurting enough. It’s soft and gentle and it's frustrating, after all that he has done, that she won’t do something worse to him.

“You complained I was gone too long,” she murmurs, her breath ghosting the tip of his cock, hot and fluttery. That alone makes him hard, and he moans, shaking.

He loses track of time, of how many times he has come. All he can see is how his fluids are webbing between her breasts, sticky and thick and shining white. Every muscle in his body is quivering, nerve endings set alight by the constant stimulation. It hurts, but not enough. She is in him, but not enough.

He digs his fingernails into the armrests when she makes him come again, milking his cock for every last drop he spills this time. Tears pool at the corners of his eyes, his limbs trembling.

“Why won’t you let me make you come,” he asks, his voice hoarse and mouth dry from how she has worked him over.

“Tell me why it matters so much to you.” Her hand tightens around his balls. “Say the words. Say it.”

He cannot. He cannot say it. He cannot admit it, cannot put words to it, cannot confess why she matters so much to him.

He lets out a broken sob as he comes again, his chest shaking.

She is so cruel. So mean. _So horrible_.

“Please... Stop…”

She pauses, looking up at him in concern. “Safeword?”

He shakes his head, embarrassed as he jerks upwards in her grip. He wants it and he hates it and he loves her and she keeps going, wringing him out in her hands.

“Thought so.” His seed covers her fingers again, and she wipes it off on his chest. “Good boy. One more, can you give me that? Can you come for me again?”

“No… I…” He pants the words out, struggling to convey to her how exhausted he is, how there is absolutely nothing left in him.

“It’s a command.”

She presses her breasts up around his cock, sliding it between them, hot and soft and sticky from all he has left on her.

He whines. The sight of her so covered in his cum, it makes him blush in a way he has not in ages. There is nothing left in him, he is wrung out and emptied and still, still she manages to make him hard. He will scream if she makes him come again, he is sure of it.

She bends her head down, flicking her tongue out to lap up the drops at the tip of his cock. The sight of it makes him whimper.

He could just say the word. He knows that she will immediately stop if he does, he trusts her — but a part of him wants this. He wants her to take him apart like this, over and over.

It feels like the best thing he can give her, sometimes. An offering for her to pry apart and enjoy.

His legs quiver with exhaustion and need for one final release, and she presses a kiss to his cock, adjusting her position and letting her breasts down so she can take his entire length in her mouth.

He does scream when he comes. It is so sudden and abrupt, tinged with more pain than pleasure, and he thrusts hard into her mouth, hitting the back of her throat. She swallows, sucking out the last drops, and then lets him go with an obscenely loud and wet pop.

When he collapses back into the chair, his chest heaving, she stands up and cups his face. He tries to avoid eye contact for a while, screwing his eyes shut tight, avoiding looking at her, but when she calls his name — his true name — he cannot help himself.

The look he gives her makes her free him immediately, and he slumps against her belly, uncaring that he is getting his own cum all over his face and hair as he clings to her.

She strokes his back. “You did well,” she murmurs, urging him up onto his feet. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Or well, me mostly.”

He follows her in a daze, her dragging him along on the leash and leading him into the shower. She does not wait for the water to turn hot before pushing him inside, and he groans underneath the cold stream.

She picks her way through the new washes he has bought, sniffing each in turn before settling on a herbal-scented one.

“Bend forward,” she says, and he obeys. She massages it into his hair, lightly dragging her fingernails along his scalp, before pushing him back under the water and rinsing it out.

He notices the slight wince in her hands from certain movements, and catches one of her hands in his, massaging her arm.

“Worked me too hard, I think,” he comments dryly.

“Maybe a little.”

He cannot help but smile at her. He takes his time, undoing the knots in her muscles, making sure she is soft in his hands before moving on to the next section. When he is done, he spins her around and holds her from behind as she washes herself off, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” he sighs. He means it, wholeheartedly.

“You make the most beautiful faces when you are coming,” she says. “I wish I had known earlier.”

He stifles a laugh against her neck. “That would hardly have been appropriate.”

“And this is?”

“Yes.” He nudges her chin, tilting her head so their lips meet for a quick kiss. “Very appropriate. Very useful.”

“Can I share your bed tonight?” she asks as they towel off, and he nods eagerly.

He comes to regret it within minutes.

Yes, they do settle down next to each other, but she still has enough awareness to make it be with strings attached. Literally.

She ties his hands behind his back, and when he whines (because he really, really wants to touch her, feel her, have his hands all over her) she digs out yet another ’gift’ from her trip: a gag. At least she is gentle as she guides him down onto the mattress, coming around on the other side and pressing herself flush against him.

It is just a tiny bit frustrating that she decided to put on her smalls and a shirt.

She passes the leash over her shoulder and nestles it between her breasts, curling up around the loop and pushing back against him. The positioning leaves his cock resting against her ass, and she is not so subtly rocking her hips back against him.

When his cock grows hard he moans because he can’t. Do. Anything. He aches and aches and when he tries to squirm away she tugs at the collar to keep him in place.

“You better keep me warm tonight,” she murmurs, arching her back and shifting so his dick ends up in the cleft of her ass. “Stay close.”

Emet-Selch nestles his face against her back, nose buried in the crook of her neck.

This is torture.

This is divine.

This is all he deserves.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: big sex toys, belly bulge, rough sex, and then very soft sex. it is how it is.

The bed is empty when Emet-Selch wakes up, but his arms are free and the leash is gone. The collar remains, and he sprawls over the bed, his body loose and tender. Her side of the bed smells distinctly of her, a faint trace of perfume and his shower wash and her skin underneath that. 

“Finally awake, then?” Her voice comes from the desk, a stack of documents in front of her, pen poised in her hand. “You slept through breakfast, lunch and dinner.” She nods at the gathering of untouched food trays on the coffee table. 

“What can I say?” He rolls over, stretching his naked body so as to catch her attention. “You worked me through so long and hard last night.”

“Glad to hear I keep my pet happy and pleased.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Pet?” 

“Is that not what you are?” She flashes him a brief smile. “Kept in a cage, collared and leashed, fed by me. Fits a lot of pet definitions.”

He snorts, though she is not wrong. Not that he minds being kept: it implies care, it implies being adored and loved. It means she appreciates him enough to keep him. 

Instead of over-thinking it, he runs a hand down his body, so clean and pristine and painfully untouched in the last hours that just his own hand sends a spark to his cock. “Your so-called pet is in need of attention.”

“Mmm. Poor thing.” 

He reluctantly peels himself off the tangled sheets when it becomes clear that she will not be joining him on the bed anytime soon, and moves to stand behind her at the desk, his fingers tracing the short, soft fur on the back of her long ears. 

Her hands slow down, putting the pen down and leaning into his touch. “I am doing paperwork.”

“So?”

“And you should be resting off what I did to you yesterday.” 

“Please, I am an Ascian. Even contained like this, I am not fragile.” His lips skim the tip of her ear, and he smirks at the sharp intake of breath she does, a small moan trembling on the exhale. 

“Eager to play again already?”

“With you, always.”

“Well. I did get you another gift.”

“How generous of you to make up your prolonged absence like so.”

“You say that now… You may not like it as much. it is for my pleasure, and not yours.”

Now _that_ makes him hard. “Show me,” he requests, his voice slightly breathless. 

She pushes back the chair and hooks her finger into his collar, eyeing the room for the perfect spot before deciding on an empty corner. She drags him along, an eager sparkle in her eyes. 

“I love seeing you like this. Vulnerable. It’s a good look on you.” She makes him kneel on the floor, stroking his hair lovingly. As she does, the now familiar feel of her tugging aether together and shaping it into ropes to hold him flutters over his skin. They coil around his arms, bringing them together behind his back. He follows along with the motions, trusting in her, leaning into her touch. 

She crouches down, cupping his face and kissing him deep, faint taste of the tea she makes too strong on her tongue. The ropes dig tighter into his skin and he gasps into her mouth.

“Don’t peek,” she says, tying a blindfold over his eyes, and he wants to, badly, especially when he hears and feels the objects around him changing. There’s the outline of her aether, of small changes to the environment, and he has an inkling of what she is doing but still. Still she surprises him. 

When she finally removes the blindfold, he studies the simple set-up she has created. In front of him she has placed a full-length mirror, and he admires how beautiful her red rope knots are against his skin. He has never seen it quite like this before, and it amuses her to see him growing hard at the sight of himself like this. 

What truly catches his eye, though, is the dildo she has brought. 

The phallus is big. Very big. His mouth goes dry at how long it is, even as there is a flicker of desire to have it inside of him. To have her push it into him and make him squirm. As bound to this vessel as he is, without the ability to change it at a whim, he is not even sure he can fit all of it inside himself. 

She notices his expression and she tilts his chin up, a wicked smile playing on her lips. “If you can take it all the way to the bottom, I’ll come on your face.”

He groans, a shudder going through his entire body at the thought of finally being allowed to see her, to feel her, to be the one who makes her come. For that chance alone, he is ready to split himself apart on the dildo. 

She attaches the leash to his collar and tugs at the chain, urging him up on his knees as she moves the dildo into position. “I’m only going to lube you up. The rest is on you.”

He scoffs. “Hardly fair, you have not touched or fucked me in a week’s time.”

“I make the rules. You just obey them.”

“You are playing dirty.”

“This is not even half of it.”

Her cool, slick fingers press into him, only two, but at least they slide in easily. She is generous with the lube, thoroughly working it into him and drizzling a large amount onto the tip of the dildo. Watching it drip down the length of it in the mirror makes him increasingly hard. 

She holds the upper part of the dildo still for him. “There. Make me proud, pet.”

He intends to. 

He lowers himself onto the head and oh, it burns. Not painfully, but he can feel how unused he has gone, how ignored and untouched she has left him. It is not an easy fit, and he struggles to relax enough to let the head inside.

She nuzzles against his neck, sucking on his earlobe as she whispers into his ear. “You are not impressing me.”

She is horribly cruel.

It pops inside, miraculously, and he pants, already feeling the sheer size of it stretching him open. For a brief, fleeting moment he considers backing out, but then he sees the expression on her face: she is enraptured. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, pupils dilated, lips parted and wet. That is all he needs to want to take it all the way, just to see what she will look like at the end. 

Working himself downwards is an ordeal. Oh, it feels good, his body is adjusting, but it is so good that he comes after just a few minutes of it, seed spilling all over his legs. He braces himself and holds still, waiting for his pulse to slow down. All the while, she circles him, watching, waiting.

She pauses in front of him and drags the heel of her stiletto through the cum on his skin, drawing a pained grunt from him. 

“Messy, messy,” she chides. “You will have to clean my shoes one day.” The tip of her shoe presses against the backside of his cock, nudging upwards. 

His legs quake. “Please…” 

“Please, what? Want me to stop? Want me to do it harder?”

Both. _Both_. He wants it all. 

She choses for him, increasing the pressure until he grows hard again, and between that and him slowly, slowly sliding the length of the dildo into himself he comes, embarrassingly fast, on her shoe. 

“Oh, that you will absolutely have to clean up.” She yanks him forward on the leash, and the dildo bends with him, just a little, but the pressure, the tight fullness inside of him, oh how it _aches_. 

She holds up her cum-covered stiletto in front of his face and he licks, fast and eager, wanting her to let him back into the upright position as soon as possible. But she is not that easily pleased, demanding he licks better, cleaner, shoving his mouth against neglected drops until her shoes shine with his saliva. 

“Ah, thank you.” 

She slackens the chain and he sits upright again, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

It is hard not to look at himself in the mirror, though he tries, he really does, because the sight of it makes his cheeks burn. Months ago, when they first met, he only dreamed of kissing her once in this lifetime. Instead, she is fulfilling her own dreams using his body, and he could not be happier. 

Determined to make some progress, because he feels stalled out, distracted by how beautifully depraved he is in this moment, he screws his eyes shut and breathes deep, waiting for the tension to give. Little by little. Deeper and deeper. Pain and pleasure surging against each other, coming and going in waves. 

“Emet-Selch,” she whispers, her mouth at his ear, voice deep and husky and very clearly affected by what he is doing. “Open your eyes. Look.”

He does and oh. _Fuck_. He is a dishevelled mess, dripping with sweat, cum covering his cock, and there is a distinct _bulge_ at his belly. 

Her hand moves up his side, fingertips stroking over the bulge, and he cannot do anything but watch. He can feel it, the head of the dildo right there under her hand, pressing into him so uncomfortably and deliciously all at once, and she strokes his stomach.

“You are being so good,” she purrs in his ear, “look at how pretty you are like this. My pretty, pretty boy. You are being so good for me.”

He wants her to look at him like this, always, her cheeks flushed and he can feel her chest pressing into him from behind, can feel her breathing harder as she looks at the distention at his belly.

There is still a noticeable part left outside of him, still a bit to go, and he trembles with the effort already put into getting this far. Her words are like sweet honey, a reward for all he has done so far, an incentive to go the whole length. 

He cannot bear to look at himself, and closes his eyes, leaning back into her as he presses, pauses, presses again. Pain and pleasure mingle, changing with each short breath he takes, and his legs are shaking. He is on the verge of breaking down, of begging her to push him down the final bit because he is not sure if he can do it himself, _please please please take me all the way there_ resting on the tip of his tongue when she presses a kiss to his neck.

“You did it.”

He opens his eyes and he is flush, all the way to the bottom, and he is wrecked and shaking and aching but he did it and she is beaming at him brighter than the sun itself. 

“Please…” He pushes the word out between short, fast breaths. “My reward…” He needs something for this feat, needs something to not lose himself right in this very moment. He is overwhelmed and sinking fast. 

“Did I promise one?” She stands up, moving around to stand in front of him. “I cannot remember.”

He snarls, tired of these damned games, tired of her doing this to him, and drags his teeth along her thigh. “You promised to come on my face. Do it. Take off your pants and do it _now_.”

She tilts his head up by his chin. Her smile is terrifyingly cruel. “Ah, yes. But I never promised I would do it today, did I?”

He slumps forward against her leg, muffling a scream into her thigh. 

“You can say the word and end it right now,” she says, stroking his hair. 

“Fuck you,” he spits, pulling himself up slightly before pushing down, hard. Yes, it hurts and it feels good and he hates her so much in this moment, hates that she played him like this and that he did not see because his mind was so hazy with _need_. 

He whines into her clothing, trying to catch her hands so he can bite her. When he does, she sucks in her breath in a hiss and slaps him. His ears ring, and he tries to bite her again. He wants to goad her, wants to feel the sting of punishment to take away the pain of getting fooled by her. 

She wrenches his head back, tugging on his hair. He spits at her, and knows instantly he has made a mistake. The way her eyes narrow as she wipes it off her face, he knows he is done for. Good. He wants to be ruined.

She re-positions herself so she is standing behind him, and she yanks the leash up so hard her arms are shaking with the effort. He can hear his neck creaking as she pulls him up by the collar, up and up until he his just an ilm from having the dildo pop out entirely. 

And then she steps on his back and pushes him down. The heel of her stiletto digs into his spine, and he pants at the dragging sensation inside him. He trembles with how much he is feeling, how his body is howling with pain and pleasure, but bites his own cheek hard to avoid screaming outright. He will not give her that satisfaction.

Up again. The collar digs deep into his neck, cutting off his air until he rises to meet it at the height she wants him at. Barely has he managed to breathe in before she pushes him down. He is so close to coming and so close to screaming. 

His brain is a cloud of messy thoughts, of how much he loves that she is willing to do this, to play this role and judge him for what he does, and that he aches for the aftercare already, that he aches for this cycle to never end, to vanish between the pages of time and history to live this quiet life forever — 

He has waited so long, and he has been broken by so many hands not hers. Now she is here, she is here _and she is not whole but for once_ , he thinks, _for once_ — 

He comes with a broken sob and her entire demeanor changes. She has sensed the change in him, the surrender, and she gathers him to her and holds him tight as she supports his weight in her arms, kissing his cheeks, his mouth.

“Why didn’t you say it?” she asks, a hint of concern in her voice. 

“I wanted you to do this to me.”

“Were you trying to break _me,_ you stupid man?” 

He presses his face against her neck. “Just myself.” 

She strokes his back. “I’m sorry if this is about to hurt.” Her strength is admirable, able to pick him up and lift him off the dildo. 

He groans when it finally pops out, and he is gaping open, trembling in her arms. She eases him into standing, supporting him all the same, her hands tender and gentle, taking inventory of his sore body. He could just snap it away, fix it in the blink of an eye, but the caring and the act of it… He needs it, and she needs it more.

She takes off the collar, and he feels naked without it, wants to whine at her, but bites it down and lets her. If she feels it necessary. 

She helps him clean off, pressing kisses to his skin now and again as if saying sorry. She wraps him in a black silk robe and then takes him to the couch, making him lie down on it with his head in her lap. She breaks off grapes from the evening meal, feeding them to him one by one. He licks at her fingertips, sucking on the pad of her thumb when it’s sticky with sweet fruit juices, but nothing more. 

“You really want to make me orgasm, don’t you?” she asks after a while. 

“Have I not been obvious in that matter?” 

“Perhaps a little.” She falls silent, gazing at the painting on the far wall. 

He opens his mouth to say something, but she covers his mouth with the palm of her hand. 

“Sorry. Just give me a minute. It’s not that I don’t want to,” she says slowly, measuring each word. “But it’s that I can’t.”

He waits, mouthing a kiss to the palm of her hand. She shudders, easing her hand to his cheek, but keeps it on his face. 

“I asked you to be forthright with me and then I can’t even return that myself. So.” She takes a deep breath. “Everything inside of me feels different after the light. Like it got shifted ninety degrees off and I am still trying to figure out where that leaves me. My body doesn’t feel like it used to. As if there is some piece missing, but it doesn’t make sense.”

She laughs, a strained one, trying to shrug off the weight of the words. “And I don’t know how to relax enough around you. You did, you know, leave me to die. Kind of gives someone issues. I am trying to make sense of it all, and this is so good, and so precious, but it’s difficult. Do you understand?”

He nods. 

She plays with the locks of hair framing his face, gazing down at him softly. “I like doing this to you. Maybe that is all I need right now.”

He turns his face, kissing her hand. He is not wholly fine with it, feels the churn of something he has wrestled with for ten thousand years opening up within him again, but he is fine with her. He will be fine, for her. 

“I know you remember some past version of me. Some version I have no concept of. I don’t want you to tell me, not yet. But one day, I will ask you many difficult questions. I hope you answer me then. Just know that _I know_ , and I’m processing.”

“Knowledge used to be a grand gift.”

“Sometimes, it’s just a painful knife wedged between your ribs.”

He knows as much. By Zodiark, he knows just how painful knowledge can be. 

She touches his nose with a finger, running it along the length of it. “All that to say: one day. When I am ready, I will ride your face for hours so hard I break your nose.”

He laughs, tilting his head up so he can kiss her fingertip. “I cannot wait.”

She feeds him some more, then reluctantly apologizes and resumes working at the desk, but he feels her gaze roving over his body again and again. It’s charming. He reclines on the couch, reading away, but he is hardly paying attention to the words on the page. 

The hours pass. He eats from the plates left for him, and she works in silence, and he looks at her bent over her work, considering many a difficult choices. 

There are a million things he has wanted to tell her, memories of how things used to be — how she used to be, under a sky far more beautiful than this one — but he has not. He knows that a sundered mind can only take so much, has seen what it has done to people who were not open enough to receive. 

So he will wait. He can do that. For now.

Soon enough — if he has guessed correctly at the things set in motion in the wake of their actions in the Tempest — other parts will fall into place. If they do not, well, he will do his part once she trusts him enough. Hopefully that will happen in this lifetime.

She sighs, folding the papers away and rolling her head from side to side. Pushing the chair back she walks over to the bed, about to shed her shirt when she stops at the top button and meets his eyes. She bites her lower lip, brow furrowing, and then she decides. “Come. Undress me.”

He does not need to be asked twice. He is at her side so fast that it makes her laugh, but he takes his time unbuttoning the shirt she wears, untucking it from the waistline of her pants. Kneeling down, he helps her out of her shoes, gently holding her by the ankles as he slides them away. He is still on his knees when he starts to work on the pants, sliding them down over the swell of her hip and stepping her legs out one after the other. 

Hooking his fingers into the sides of her underwear, he looks up at her. “May I?”

“Yes.”

And she is entirely naked in front of him, her skin prickling with goosebumps. 

He kisses her slowly, taking his time as he traces her body upwards. The tattoos line her from foot up over the thighs, a few daring swirls skirting close to her sex but none touching it, over her stomach and ribs (“those hurt so much to do,” she sighs when he traces them with his tongue) and finally, her shoulders. 

She gestures at the bed. “Sit down. On the edge.”

He does as told, their knees touching as she watches his groin with an amused expression. 

“You really get hard for so little.”

“You affect me.”

“That’s a lot of power to give over to someone else.”

“Only a fraction of what I am willing to you.” It is true. Painfully true.

She shakes her head, smiling, not taking his bait. “Can you…”

He snaps his fingers.

She watches his cock, sucking in her lower lip. Her hand moves between her legs for a few seconds, then comes away shining wet, holding it up in front of his face: _see what you do to me_ hanging unspoken between them. _Witness how much you matter to me, even if…_

His tongue flicks out and tastes her fingers, moaning around the digits. 

She puts her knees on either side of him, one arm draped over his shoulders and using the other hand to grip and position his cock. She teases the head along her slit once, twice, and then guides it between her folds and holds it there, waiting for him to meet her eyes. “Be still for me.”

“Anything for you.”

She takes a deep, shaky breath and presses the head to her entrance. Her muscles clench down on him instinctively, and she struggles to get him further in. When he tries to help her out, she pushes his hand away, a tension in her movements. 

“Don’t… Don’t do any magick. Please.” Her voice is tight. “Don’t just snap your fingers and fix this.”

He offers what he can. “Can I touch you?”

“No.”

“Can I at least kiss you?”

“Yes.”

He carefully presses his lips to hers, keeping his kiss soft and restrained, though he is aching for more. 

She relaxes enough that the tip of his cock slides in, and she kisses him with more fervor, slowly taking him into her, whimpering and whining into his mouth but never ending the kiss. She clings to him so hard her nails break his skin, but he does not mind. The feeling of being inside her, of her doing this, it’s… It’s so excruciatingly filled with meaning.

Finally, she has him fully inside her, and she sits in his lap, breathing hard and kissing him and nothing else. 

He does not mind. His mind is reeling with how good she feels, how her inner walls clench around him and how she is breathing, how she struggled but she did it and he does not want to shatter this delicate moment by being too rough. He holds still, following her lead. She is so hot and wet and the slightest movement of her muscles has him moaning into her mouth, digging his fingertips into her hips. 

That alone feels amazing already.

Although… If they are not going to move anytime soon, at least he can look. 

She quirks an eyebrow at him, no doubt sensing the change in the aether around them. “What are you doing?”

“Moving the mirror. I want to see you. I want to see _us_.”

“Greedy.”

“Always.”

She sits back a little, their nose tips touching, her eyes heavy-lidded. “What do you see then?”

Someone he wants to call beautiful and loved and cherished, but he cannot utter that. Instead, he can paint her with his words.

“Your back. All the tattoos on it, particularly the one on this shoulder blade.” He touches it, tracing it. “It reminds me of a popular glyph in Allag, and there it meant _of the road._ Marking you as a wanderer. Here, these points…” He taps his fingers against four of them. “They were the guiding markers in Allag, stars that are not seen today. Locate them in the night sky back then, and you could find your way home.” 

“What happened to those stars?”

He smiles wryly. “If you have been listening to my tales of what us Ascians do, I am sure you can guess.”

Her expression falls, for a brief moment, the illusion of their untouched little secret world broken — and then she covers it up, pushing onwards. “What else do you see?”

“This tattoo trailing down your spine. I wonder how much it hurt, or if you used potions and magicks to endure.”

“It was not that bad.”

“You must have a high pain tolerance.”

“It’s abysmally low for everything not tattoos.” She flexes her hips, just the slightest movement, but it has them both inhaling sharply. “I just pretend it isn’t.”

He makes a mental note of it, moving even slower as his hands travel down the column of her back.

“I see your ass, even more beautiful naked like this, though it tormented me through the night.” He gives it a squeeze, still not having quite forgiven her for how she made him sleep pressed up against her like that. “I see your slickness covering both of our thighs, dripping wet as you are. And as for how it makes me feel, well. Do you not feel it inside you yourself, how hard I am?” 

And the words, always unsaid: _It makes me feel at home, to be here with you, to be inside you like this._

Instead he drags his teeth along her jawline. “Do you have any idea how much I yearned for this moment since we met?”

She sighs softly, but smiles. “I guess it’s nothing like what you dreamt about.”

“No. It’s far, _far_ better.” 

At that, she laughs, heartfelt and relaxed, and the motion of it makes him tense up. He did not realize he was this close to the edge but now it is approaching fast. 

“Are you —“ 

“Yes,” he grunts out. 

She drags her lips over his earlobe, tongue flicking out to touch it lightly. “You may,” she whispers, and he comes with a shudder, spilling himself inside her. 

She presses her face to his neck, her warm breath tickling his skin. “Think you can get hard again?”

“Yes,” he says breathlessly, drawing the necessary aether to make it so, same as the trick she performed on him yesterday. 

“Good. I just. Want to stay like this for a while.”

He strokes her hair, watching them in the mirror, watching as his hot seed drips down from where they are joined. He barely needs the magick to stay hard seeing it. “As long as you need.” 

As long as she will have him, he will offer himself to her — and beyond. Always. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: consensual somnophilia, emet being nasty and spitting

For once, she tells Emet-Selch that she will be gone, and for how long, and he finds it endearing that she cares enough to not taunt him with her absence. It is almost affectionate. Not even in Amaurot did she offer him that grace.

And like in Amaurot, he is still terrible at waiting. It is the wait itself that bores him, as it always has, having to fill all this empty time with something while also not thinking about how frail and mortal she is. How little would it take to send her into the lifestream? Terrifyingly little. A stray arrow. A piece of food swallowed wrong. At night, he sometimes wakes up and watches her while she sleeps, hanging on to her breaths. Counting them.

It is getting under his skin how utterly mortal she is, and it frustrates him because it is the one thing he cannot alter about her, cannot re-make in her. Like he is bound, she is bound in a different way, tied to her sundered existence.

At best, he has two hundred years with her but the way she is living…

So he paces, and he reads, and he remakes everything in the room over and over. It keeps his hands busy and his thoughts focused, not letting a single one of them stray and ruin is perfection. Well, a few times. He is almost flawless, but the tattoos strain against him as he works.

And always, his hands keep going back to the empty space around his neck. She has not put the collar back on him since she took it off during their last session — indeed, she has not even touched him since.

He opens the top drawer of the desk and stares at it, the delicateness of it. Along the inside are sigils and runes carved, ones he cannot recognize — frustrating as that is. He does not like that there are still pockets of knowledge out of his reach, though she likely delights in it. One day, he will have to ask her.

The temptation is too much, however. He undoes the latch and puts the collar on, running his fingertips along the smooth surface. He would hate to put it into words what it means to him, it should not mean as much as it does, but he finds it… Pleasurable to wear. A reminder that she will come back to him this time.

Late in the evening, he hears the tell-tale sign of her heels in the corridor. The door swings open and she enters, wringing her wet hair out. Her eyes zone in on him, and there is a flicker of raw and brutal need in her that he can sense from across the room. He swallows hard, already hopeful for where the night might take them.

She strides over to the desk and rummages around in the drawers, emptying one out onto the floor in frustration. “Where’s the damn collar?”

“On me.” He tugs down the shirt so she can see, a smug smile on his lips.

She laughs, mood changing in the blink of an eye as she beckons him close, hooking her finger under the collar to draw him in close. “Oh, what a pet you are. You love to be owned, don’t you?”

“By you, yes.”

She kisses him, more teeth and hunger than tenderness, a tension in her entire body as she moves against him, tugging at his clothes. “So good and obedient,” she breathes against his mouth. “Tonight, you will please me. I have need of your touch.”

Music to his ears. Whatever she wishes from him, he will offer up at the altar of her body.

She clips the leash to his collar, walking them over to the bed. He watches as she undresses, and he sees what she means about the art of it — ilm by ilm she is revealed, part by part. Her movements are fluid, and it reminds him of a dance he used to be fond of watching in Allag. How times change.

She climbs onto the bed, leaning back on the pile of pillows, and pulls him on top of her by the leash, holding it taut as she presses demanding kisses to his mouth before slackening it, giving him free roam.

He takes his time with her body, for once given the freedom to access her as he wants, and he intends to savor every minute of it. There is so much of her to touch, so many tattoos to trace, with fingers and tongue and eyes. Her skin is so soft, so fragrant, he licks and bites and cannot get enough. She tastes of the First, the difference in aether layered on her skin. He wonders what has happened there that has her so worked up to need him like this.

Is it trust between them, or is he just a convenient body? Not that he minds either way. Having her body beneath him like this, so warm and his, all his… He could lose himself here.

She, however, is impatient. She catches the chain and tugs until he is face to face with her.

“I cannot know what it is you want unless you tell me, dear,” he says, annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his thorough mapping of her body. “For all my talents, I am not a mind reader.”

She bites his lower lip, hard. “I need you to fuck me tonight. Will you?”

His mouth goes dry and his cock rigid. “Yes.”

She licks into his mouth. “Good pet.”

The leash slackens in her hands again, certain that he is aware of what she wants, and he thinks that she really should not be so hopeful of him being on _good_ behavior with her. After all, he enjoys the frisson of annoyance when he disobeys, when he subverts her command.

But he will grant her a little of goodness. For now. The night has many hours left in it.

He kisses a path down her torso until his face is between her legs, and maintains eye contact with her as he parts her lips with the tip of his tongue. She shifts under his mouth, but her legs spread wider and a flush creeps up her cheeks. He smiles against her, bringing his fingers up to help spread her so he can take her in entirely.

“Thank you for indulging me,” he murmurs, dipping down to press his mouth to her clit, gently rolling it between his lips.

“You have earned it,” she sighs, a hint of pleasure in her voice. The tensions are still present in her body, he can feel the muscles of her thighs caging his head in, and he sets his mind on soothing that out of her.

She relaxes, little by little, as his tongue and lips trace her, map her, devour her. He presses his tongue into her, fingers alongside, and her inner walls tighten around him as she grabs his hair and rises up against his face.

He snaps his fingers and his clothes melt away in the blink of an eye, and he groans at the relief of cool air against his dick.

She grabs his cock before he can line it up, and shifts it lower. His eyes widen, and he laughs at her. “Really, dear? Are you truly ready for me?”

“I tell you what I want and you give it to me,” she says sweetly, and the way she looks up at him… She could command him to rip the world apart in this moment and he would do it.

The power she has over him should frighten him but it delights him. It thrills him to please her and be ordered around and to _surrender_ to her, and this is a kind of surrender. She tells him what she wants and he gives.

He conjures oil to cover his fingers, using them to lubricate her. Already at the touch of his fingers just circling the entrance, she is grinding against his hand, a heady moan spilling from her lips.

The thrill of pleasing her knows no bounds.

“Move over onto your side,” he says, giving her hips a nudge.

“Who rules here?”

“Please,” he begs, and she rolls her eyes but does as told. He settles himself behind her, taking his time as he waits for the muscles to relax enough to just let his finger pop in on its own. By the time it does, she is panting, looking over her shoulder at him.

He works her slowly, taking his time. He does not wish to cause her any pain or discomfort, and pays close attention to her body’s reactions as he fingers her. And perhaps, a part of him wants to drag it out as long as possible, to get her to beg, a little. His greed knows no bounds and she keeps inflaming it.

When she starts squirming, he bites her shoulder. “You are only making this harder,” he chides.

“You are too slow,” she snaps back, looking at him over her shoulder.

Her hands grasp his cock, and she laughs at how hard he is. He pumps into her grip, embarrassingly needy for her ministrations, and it earns him a correction. Her fingers close around the root, and tighten so hard that he gasps… But even as her hand moves away the pressure remains. He glances down and groans.

“You are cruel,” he says, aching under the cock ring.

She shrugs, a devious smile on her lips. “And you need to remember your place in this.”

He curves his fingers inside of her, drawing a deep moan from her. “What was that, dear? You are the one who asked me to do this. Practically begged me.” A small lie, he will admit, but he likes how it riles her up.

And it gives him a terrible idea. Oh, she will hate him for this. He cannot wait.

He spreads her cheeks apart, bowing his head as he spits.

She freezes, eyes wide open. “Did you just spit on me?”

He rubs the saliva into her entrance, smug. “Yes.”

She yanks down on the chain, hard. “Disgusting. You are filthy. Depraved. _Horrible_.” A surge of aether passes through him, and he slumps forward, resting his forehead against between her shoulder blades as he catches his breath.

She finally figured out how to use his tattoos against him. Clever and lovely and _ah —_ how it hurts to be loved by her.

“Clean. It. Up.” Each word is punctuated by another surge, hitting his nerves with an exquisite blend of pain and pleasure as he kisses a path downwards to her ass, his teeth scraping against her spine. It hurts and it feels so good to be hurt.

This is all he has wanted, to be used for her needs, her pleasure. In her hands, he can become a tool used for something beautiful again — her enjoyment.

He adds more oil, fingering deeper in her even as he licks into her, and she is getting messier and messier, bucking and moaning and dripping wet between her legs.

But he wants to hear her beg. He will not relent on this, no matter how much his cock throbs and aches, no matter how hard she pulls on the chain.

They have always been stubborn together. He wants to feel the caress of eternity with her again.

And when she breaks, it is the most beautiful keening noise he has ever heard. “Please, please, just fuck me already,” she whines, and he sinks his teeth into the curve of her ass to leave a mark.

“I thought you would never ask,” he says, unable to hide how smug he is.

He moves himself into position behind her, taking his time as he slicks his cock up, and just as she is beginning to tilt over from needy whimpers to feral snarls of demand, he lines himself up. The tip of his cock pushes, pauses, then presses into her slowly. When it pops past the tight ring then both moan, and he has never felt as attuned to her as he does in this moment: pleasure and ache moving between them, bonding them together.

He dips his hand between her legs and she is filthy wet, her folds soaking. She whimpers even as she lets him lift her leg up slightly, but he quickly realizes her noises are those of need, not pain. All the tension has left her body, and she relaxes into his touch. His fingers circle her clit, the wet noises making him bite her shoulder because they are so _obscenely loud_.

He wants to have every part of her, all at once, to shed this vessel’s limitations and show her his true self again. To give her pleasure her body has never known before. But she has bound him to her level, to her rules and restrictions, and he follows them as well as he can.

“Move,” she sighs, canting her hips ever so slightly to underscore that she wants him, inside of her, as deep as he can go.

“As you command,” he says, using one hand to pin her hips as he sheathes himself fully within her ass. It is so deliciously tight, clenching down on him in a way that makes him have to pause and gather himself.

She looks back at him with the same concern in her eyes she has when she is quietly asking if he wants to use the safe word. “Are you alright?”

“I’m wonderful,” he says thickly, adding a slow roll of his hips. “I’m _excellent_.”

With less of a graceful movement than he would like, he uses magick to tug the mirror into position so he can watch her.

She smiles, resting her head propped up like a resplendent goddess as he fucks her. As if he is not coming apart, as if what he does to her hardly matters beyond the sheer pleasure she feels.

She meets his eyes briefly in the mirror, fleeting, but she makes him watch as she brings the chain down between her legs, letting it come to rest against her slit. When he moves, it moves, her hips rolling back and forth between the sensations he is the cause of.

It is cruel, how she both fans the fire of his devotion while starving him. It is cruel how well she can twist even the most yielding act into using him for her own enjoyment.

He wants to see _her_ be the one undone. He wants to give her the kind of messy release she keeps offering him.

He gently re-positions them so she is on her stomach, him above her, and the angle difference has her keening. He presses soothing kisses to her shoulders and neck, but she tugs at the chain until their bodies are flush against each other, his chest pressed to her back and nose buried against her neck. She writhes under him, raising her hips best she can to make him reach deeper in her.

When he moves, she shudders underneath him and the way she is moaning is almost feral. He thrusts into her, trying his hardest to keep his pace even, but even with the tight ring around his cock, he starts to lose himself in the sheer magnitude of sensations — her scent, her sounds, her beauty.

He pauses, watching their shared reflection in the mirror. Her eyes are closed, his leash wrapped around her fingers and resting under her chin, and the expression gracing her face is absolute bliss. She is in her own world of pleasure, sighing softly with each movement he makes.

Does it matter to her that he is the one moving inside her? Does he care?

Yes, and no, and yes.

She opens her eyes and meets his, watching him hazily as he fucks her, as he knows his expression is growing more and more pained. The plea is on the tip of his tongue.

At least she is merciful. “You may come,” she says, snapping her fingers and letting the ring dissolve around him.

With a shudder he pulls out and spills himself on her lower back, nails digging into her so hard he leaves small crescents of red behind.

She stretches out, languid and relaxed, even as he pants and flops onto his back. They are filthy, covered in sweat and his seed and her arousal, but even in this small space between she looks so damn dignified. As if she was not the one getting fucked just now.

She reaches out to brush a lock of his mussy hair from his forehead. “Is there anything you want me to do to you? A just reward is fitting for your service tonight.”

“Fulfilling my fantasies now? Have you already gone through your entire list of desires?”

She flicks a finger against his nose, hard. “Take it or leave it, but the moment I get off this mattress to shower the offer is void.”

He grins. He does, in fact, have an idea in mind.

* * *

The reason why Emet-Selch has grown so fond of sleeping is because time can simply pass him by unnoticed while he indulges in dreams woven from his sweetest memories. Decades and centuries he has whiled away in the dreamscapes of the past, where she is intact and merciless in her judgement of him.

Azem the wanderer never spared his feelings. Azem the wanderer knew how to ruin him and he knew how to thank her for it. Her hands were swift and just, the same as in battle and adventure as when she dug through him and delivered him to what he deserved.

He has woven this specific dream many times before, letting himself get lost in it. It is, however, the first time he revisits it since the Tempest. Azem, dressed in nothing but sunlight, and the greenest of meadows beneath her.

She was radiant. She was resplendent. How could these new fractured worlds even begin to comprehend who she was?

Distantly, he feels the hands of reality touching him, testing how deep he is sleeping. He wonders, even in this semi-lucid dream of his, what she thinks of this. He leaves himself vulnerable to her and asks her to take him, to fuck him as he balances on the edge between dreaming and waking.

It is not so much a fantasy as a necessity for him.

In his dream, Azem watches him in the same silent way she has for the last twelve thousand years. Not that he has forgotten her voice — but that he cannot think of what she would _say_ to him now. Or he can, but he dreads hearing it more than he craves it.

The shape of her is changing in front of him, a thing not quite within his control. Tattoos on her knuckles that he knows were pristine. Scars on a body that never had to suffer. The present bleeding into his memories and changing them.

Nothing remains untainted, least of all dreams.

A long line of them, the history of those he has watched from afar, but now. Now she is pressing up against him from behind in bed, while in his dream he reaches out to Azem who is forever out of his reach, dancing away from his hands. He has chased her for so long, looking for her refraction in shards even as they were doomed for destruction.

This is a different kind of pain, a knife that cuts through him with precision.

He is only half-awake, half still in the dream, the contours of the world soft and unfocused, a liminal place he could stay forever. He wavers between the two — between the meadow dappled in sunlight and the bed where she is fingering him, kissing his back as she keeps it just slow and tender enough to let him stay partially immersed in the dream.

Her fingers pull out of him and he whines at the loss of her warmth, but it is quickly replaced by the head of her dildo pressing against him. She spreads him apart, fitting herself against him, pushing forward so slowly. It is not an easy fit. She really does favor bigger sizes but he is not one to complain, the deliciousness in the pain of being stretched something he can lose himself in if she is the one to inflict it.

The dream fractures, just a little, the details of it losing their precise clarity. He moans, and she shushes him, sliding two fingers into his mouth. He sucks on them, clinging to her wrist, before he falls back into the dream where it is him pressed down into the field of red flowers as Azem looms above him.

Azem puts her bare foot on his face and his tongue flicks out, licking at her toes, sucking them into his mouth. She is disgusted with him and he loves her. She mocks and demeans him wordlessly. He knows the outline of what she would say were she here — no, were she _aware_.

Azem’s feet continue stepping on him, but it does not hurt enough. It does not hurt like he wishes it did. The juxtaposition of softly getting fucked in the waking and the harsh Azem of his dreams makes the edges blur further, unable to reconcile reality with his mind’s desires.

When she slides a finger in alongside the dildo, he cannot take it anymore, clenching the sheets in his fists. The dream shatters, and he gasps awake. She fists her hand in his hair, pulling his head back and biting on his neck.

“Was it a good dream?” she whispers against his ear.

“The best kind,” he moans, more truth than lie, and their hands both reach for his cock at the same time to stroke him to completion.

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be just some uncomplicated quick fun romps and instead Mild Plot and Feelings happened. Anyway, he will get the rawing he deserves in the next chapter. This will be multiple chapters, there will be a lot of Emet getting the strap, and that's all I know for certain right now~
> 
> Title from Puscifer's [Rev 22:20](https://youtu.be/xSoSDCQ20L8). 
> 
> My twitter is [@celestial_txt](https://twitter.com/celestial_txt) & [my carrd](https://celestial-txt.carrd.co/) is here.


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